You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
Nowadays traffic jams are becoming a big problem in most cities and bigger towns. Some people suggest that widening of roads is a solution to this problem. Do you agree or disagree? Give your opinion and suggest a solution to this problem.
Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.
You should write at least 250 words.
Sample Answer
Inhabitants of planet earth are faced with numerous challenges in the form of overpopulation, traffic congestions, and pollution and so on. Metropolitan and other growing cities not only offers basic necessities and luxurious lifestyle but they do come up with their own challenges and one such is traffic congestion. Though widening of roads to overcome this issue is laudable but I don’t agree fully and believe there are other alternates available. This essay will analyse the problem associated with extending the width of the roads and will suggest few alternatives.
Proponents of this view point say that widening streets and expressways will help them to increase the number of lanes which in turn can cater more traffic. This strategy will surely help to reduce congestion, but usually, streets and highways are running at their maximum width and widening them either by narrowing the islands or reducing the pedestrian tracks would not be possible. In many cases, this strategy doesn’t always work as the building and shops are already located at the edge of the road. For instance, Zaib-Un-Nisa street in sadder, Karachi is already at its maximum width and the only solution to this problem is to allow the traffic to flow in one direction on the entire street.
However, there are many alternate approaches which can be implemented to tackle this problem. We can easily reduce traffic blackening on streets by charging the motorists more during rush hours, car parking should not be allowed on busy roads and overhead pedestrian bridges should be constructed to regulate the traffic flow. We can also use the lane-divider technique like the one used in Malaysia, where one lane of the opposite track is included in the congested track to regulate the flow in busy hours. Moreover, office workers should be encouraged to use car pooling services like Singapore. Furthermore, people should be motivated to use mass transit system like the subways and the metros.
To recapitulate, the aforementioned provides plausible alternate solutions to reduce traffic jams and have highlighted some factors that can limit the extension of road widths. In my opinion, widening of roads will not work always and we should look into using alternate approaches like the ones mentioned above.
[ Written by – Tauseef Raza ]